The Status of Bukkit

Our Release System
The most common complaints we've gotten about our new release system is that getting a Recommended Build out is taking considerably longer than before. The reason we switched to a new release system is because the amount of work that we have to do to get a Recommended Build out meant that there was a huge delay before servers could update and this was unacceptable. We felt that you should be able to choose if you wanted to take a risk and run an update immediately or shortly after Mojang released it or to wait for us to certify and release a Recommended Build.

For the most part, our new Beta releases are what our old Recommended Builds were. If you can't wait for us to go through the extensive testing process we've designed to certify a Recommended Build, then you should be using the Betas. We know that many of you want us to promote a Recommended Build shortly after a Minecraft update is made available, but expecting as such is unrealistic. It is simply not possible for us to go through the 190+ tests, design and develop new features and fix all the bugs within a week, let alone a few hours or days. If we were to promote a Recommended Build shortly after an update came out, there is no way we could seriously consider it "recommended" and it would only prove to be misleading to the Server Admins out there that rely on our Recommended Builds system to determine if a build is stable enough to be run on their production servers without the risk of their world being corrupted or something.

As a result, we designed and switched over to a new system that offers Development builds to Server Admins that love being on the edge, Beta builds for Server Admins that simply want something that is stable enough for production and Recommended Builds for those who want to be completely assured that we've addressed any major issues that have come up since the Minecraft update was released.

We feel that this system offers us the freedom to cater to the many different types of Server Admins we have in our community and will continue to follow this release model well into the future.

The Future of Bukkit
Over the past few months we've been working closely with the community as part of the Bukkit Bleeding system on the development of Bukkit. The speed and quality of the code within the project has been significantly improved by the skilled, dedicated and passionate individuals of the Bukkit Bleeding team and many of the features in Bukkit today would not be there if it were not for them. This group of developers were integral in allowing us to properly utilise and realise the potential of the new dev -> beta -> RB release system we recently switched to, as well as helping us get builds out faster without having to sacrifice quality or stability.

That being said, it only makes sense that we bring in some of the contributors from Bukkit Bleeding into the Bukkit Team itself to help us maintain the project in our absence as we intend to focus on designing, developing and releasing a high quality modding API for Minecraft itself. Without further ado, I'm really happy and honoured to announce that, effective immediately, feildmaster and Wolvereness are now a part of the Bukkit Team. Please join me in welcoming them to the team, with the amount of work they've been putting into the project behind the scenes, they more than deserve it.

We hope that the changes we've made and continue to make will be for the best for the community and the project and thank you for your continued support. Along with the new additions to our team, we're hoping to have a Recommended Build ready for Minecraft 1.2.5 right as Mojang releases it to the public. Thanks to Mojang releasing a preview build for modders to work with ahead of time and this update primarily being a bug fix release, we should be able to have a compatible, stable build available at the same time the Minecraft update is pushed out to the public.

I am very happy to see the growth in Bukkit. Also I like the new release system but on my server I will not be taking any risks with Beta Builds and I will wait for the Recommended Builds. I believe that they are worth the wait ,

Whether or not Mojang notifies the Bukkit Project ahead of time makes little difference. The frequency of our updates is unpredictable as the complexity of Minecraft updates varies each time. The delay is purely on our end as we need to go through an extensive process to update Bukkit and ensure that it is stable enough to be considered 'recommended' before I am happy with releasing something.

I'm thinking the new release system was a great idea, its just that not all bukkit users even understand how it works. When your dealing with young server admins they just want to collect those donations and put plugins onto their servers. My comment is not meant to insult server admins, but many are inexperienced so that cause them to flip out.

Thank you for telling us this. Now, I completly understand why it takes so long. And I'm not going to lie. It sometimes gets frustrating when people are waiting for 2 weeks or so for a recommended build to come out. But everyone who thinks that this takes 5 seconds to do is completly wrong. I will be going to school shortly for computers and game design. I have a ruff idea of how this stuff is put together, and let me tell you, its not easy. So for those people who can't wait, try to do half the stuff they are doing, and you will find out that they are working the hardest, and the best, that the possibly can. They just want to get the updates out just right for us.

Hey Bukkit Team,
I know you guys get a lot of crap for not having RB's not ready the minute the update is out, and i would just like to say I and my whole server community would like to thank you guys for the good and hard work you do.

I think the hardest part of the updates are all of the people pushing for them. When there is an update to minecraft, everyone wants to jump immediately on that, regardless of what has been added/fixed etc.,

Players push the server administrators, server admins push plugin devs and bukkit devs, plugin devs push bukkit devs, and everyone keeps trying to calm everyone lower on the ladder. It's a highly frustrating system, but what can we do? Everyone's under pressure. Kind of silly for a game based on placing blocks.